Torsade Literary Space Frédéric Boutet: Good Counsel (complete)
Frédéric Boutet Tales Good Counsel (complete) After a bridge, and at the meeting of two roads before a house where the sign read: Café-Restaurant, M. Bridol stopped his car, a little automobile he drove himself, and alighted with bounce and elegance. […]
Frédéric Boutet: The Legacy (complete)
Frédéric Boutet Tales The Legacy (complete) It was evening, Mme Lefertin at her sewing, next to the table set for dinner. M. Lefertin appeared, looking so pale and distraught that she stood, her work falling from her hands… “Octave! My God! […]
Frédéric Boutet: The Peacock Feathers (complete, plus a bonus!)
Frédéric Boutet Tales The Peacock Feathers (complete) “The Arthur Harris affair is one of the drollest I have ever seen.” (This was told us by the illustrious London detective Barnay.) “The police at first allowed themselves to be taken in, as […]
Frédéric Boutet: The Passenger (complete)
Frédéric Boutet Tales The Passenger (complete) This story is long past…it took place nearly forty years ago. We were told it by one Captain Marius Cazavan, retired, of Marseille. “But I recall everything as though it were yesterday. I sailed for a firm out of […]
Frédéric Boutet: The Faker (complete)
Frédéric Boutet Tales The Faker (complete) The man stood haggard, still gripping the knife. He was in a sordid hotel room, the dead girl stretched at his feet, a dark pool oozing from her open throat. He had found her working the boulevard Sébastopol. […]
Frédéric Boutet: Berthe (complete)
Frédéric Boutet Tales Berthe (complete) He closed the store in haste and ran onto the rue de Rivoli, towards the boulevard de Sébastopol. She might be waiting. Before turning at the corner, he stopped a minute, a habit of his, before […]
Frédéric Boutet: The Bargain (complete)
Frédéric Boutet Tales The Bargain (complete) On the fifth floor, at an old, forbidding door that made her wish only to leave, rang a young visitor, frail in her worn dress, her black hat…her heart beating. “Is he there? I want to speak to […]
Frédéric Boutet: Complicity (complete)
Frédéric Boutet Tales Complicity (complete) Having made a tour of two large department stores…and buying none of what tempted her; then of the elegant streets, where she felt herself still less elegant than on the modest ones, Germaine Leprez hesitated at the threshold of a […]
Frédéric Boutet: The Balance (complete)
Frédéric Boutet Tales The Balance (complete) Lunch finished, M. Buchêne was back to business, per custom smoking his tranquil cigar while in discussion with Mme Buchêne. This intimate hour in the middle of their day had been a delight to them since the start […]
Frédéric Boutet: Hippolyte (complete)
Frédéric Boutet Tales Hippolyte (complete) After dinner, they passed into the smoking room. It was still light outside. Through windows that opened onto densest parkland, entered a fresh evening smell. Little Mme Livoy, determinedly poetic (as suited her befogged demeanor), sighed that the […]